This article examines the arguments for and against reforming the African
state system in order to create more viable and peaceful states. It argues
that while such a process has the potential to be enormously disruptive,
selective recognition of some ‘states-within-states’, such as Somaliland,
does offer promising approaches to more effective governance and more viable
and coherent states.

Introduction

On 31 May 2001, the self-declared Republic of Somaliland conducted a
referendum on its future. In what has generally been regarded as an accurate
reflection of public sentiment, Somalilanders voted heavily in favor of
independence from Somalia proper (Initiative and Referendum Institute,
2001). The results were perhaps not surprising. Since the early 1990s,
Somaliland has essentially been a ‘state-within-a-state’; a political entity
which had emerged out of a previously recognized territorial third world
state but which lacked formal recognition from the international community.
Indeed, Somaliland had already acquired many tangible features of statehood:
government ministers and a president, a flag, an army, its own currency,
vehicle licence plates and, perhaps most important, a sense of self. By
comparison, Somalia-proper has continued to languish in political
uncertainty. As Virginia Luling pointed out, Somalia outside of Somaliland
had already become the prime example of a ‘collapsed state’, a ‘byword for
anarchy’. Becoming ‘another Somalia’, she observed, was the outcome to be
avoided by all other African states (1997:287).

This bifurcated outcome thus presents a contradiction to the recent
apocalyptic literature which speculates on the prospects of state breakdown
(Kaplan, 1994). While many of the existing territorial states in Africa
remain fragile and prone to collapse, these conditions have not always given
way to anarchy. In a few cases, the breakdown of large, arbitrary state
units has given way to more coherent and viable (though, to be sure, not
always more benevolent) political entities. The question remains to what
extent these sub-units represent alternatives, which the international
community should look to in a long-term effort to bring greater stability,
security and development to peoples in Africa. In some cases, it may be time
to abandon expectations that African countries can be recreated as they once
were and consider other decentralized approaches for the longer term.
Radical decentralization, the use of an interim status short of formal
recognition, or even recognition itself should all be considered
alternatives to Africa’s current state system.

Contrasting Views on Reforming Africa’s State System

Persistent violent conflict and economic insecurity in Africa has led a
number of scholars and commentators to argue that it is time for the
international community to reconsider its recognition of the existing
African state system. The motive for reforming Africa’s territorial
structure is the perceived need to rationalize dysfunctional state units,
and in doing so, to alleviate the most relentless and violent conflicts.
Many contemporary conflicts in Africa are assumed to result from the fact
that incompatible ethnic groups have in effect been forced to live with each
other because of an ongoing devotion to Africa’s arbitrary colonial borders.
Africa’s economic difficulties are also attributed to the fact that
Europeans colonized Africa not in order to create future viable sovereign
countries but to serve their own European interests. The subsequent
commitment to colonial borders was articulated in the Charter of the
Organization of African Unity (OAU), which repeatedly makes reference to the
importance of maintaining Africa’s ‘territorial integrity’. .. ..1 In a
recent editorial, however, one African scholar Makau Matua, contends that,
if democracy is to be realized in countries such as Rwanda and Burundi,
partition is necessary. This is because the dominant minority in each case,
the Tutsi, will not allow its interests to be jeopardized by the
implementation of majority rule. ‘Just like Kosovar Albanians and Serbs’,
Makau Matua argues, ‘the Tutsi and the Hutu cannot live together or tolerate
each other.’ He adds:

A real solution to the Hutu-Tutsi conflict … would be for a United Nations
panel to redraw the maps of Burundi and Rwanda to create two wholly new
states: one for the Hutu, the other for the Tutsi (Matua, 2000).2

Other scholars have echoed these sentiments and called for action to find
ways to reduce conflict and reverse Africa’s political misery. Michael Chege
has argued that, ‘Where a people’s allegiance to their own ethnic group
supersedes that given to the state, it may be time to let them secede or
fuse with another state. For what does a country benefit if it secures its
boundaries yet suffers perennial bloodshed among its own people?’
(1992:153). While some commentators envision a redrawing of borders, others
remain open-minded about the forms of political reorganization that might
take place. Chege obviously sees secession as an option which must be
considered but, in addition, he proposes federalism as a means of defusing
autocratic power. Jeffrey Herbst also declares that alternatives to Africa’s
existing state system must be considered, and proposes initiating this
process by ‘publicly declaring that the international community is not
blindly wedded to the current state system’ (Herbst, 1996/7:133). Indeed,
Somaliland’s late President Mohamed Haji Ibrahim Egal expressed his own
desire to achieve an ‘interim status’, short of recognition, from the
international community so that it could, at least for the time being,
qualify for financial assistance from international lending institutions
(Hirsch, 2001).

While options short of independence are ultimately domestic affairs and
therefore not necessarily the direct concern of the international community,
there is a well-established reluctance to allow unrestricted redrawing of
African borders. Historically, even some of the most prominent proponents
of national self-determination have subsequently reconsidered such a policy
when the sheer scope and risks associated with such an endeavor became
apparent. American President Woodrow Wilson, for one, had reservations about
the precedent that was being set when principles of national
self-determination were applied outside of Europe following World War I. In
testimony before the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, Wilson
acknowledged:

When I gave utterance to those words [that all nations had a right to
self-determination], I said them without the knowledge that nationalities
existed, which are coming to us day after day. … You do not know and cannot
appreciate the anxieties that I have experienced as a result of many
millions of people having their hopes raised by what I have said.3

Indeed, it is not always clear that substantive overall gains would be made
in a general restructuring of the African state system. On the contrary,
there are valid reasons to think that any sort of public declaration on
self-determination would be enormously disruptive. In regions where
competition over scarce resources is fierce, the creation of separate Tutsi
and Hutu states, for example, would almost certainly reorient the conflict
from one fought along ethnic lines to one fought along an even more
narrowly-defined cleavage. In Rwanda, most of the participants in the 1994
genocide were Hutu but they were Hutus of a particular clan from a specific
region – the Bushiru of Ruhengiri and Byumba. As Bruce Jones has noted:

The Habyarimana regime was in fact a clan-based northern Hutu regime that
was as discriminatory against Hutus from southern Rwanda as against Tutsis
(Jones, 1999:121).

Similarly, in Somalia, the fluidity of clan divisions complicates efforts to
formalise new political boundaries to replace those of the original colonial
divisions. When individuals are competing for a slice of a finite pie,
critics of restructuring say, formalised division and redivision of states
in an effort to reduce conflict may, in the end, be an exercise that merely
perpetuates it.

Other practical problems associated with national self-determination and
economic viability would also have to be considered in any formal
territorial restructuring. Who would decide which states are deserving and
which deserving states would be viable? Is a community which has been
oppressed by its own government and which might be judged economically
unviable less worthy of statehood than a similarly oppressed group which has
a thriving industrial base? Would the possibility that most African states
appear to be even less viable than other developing regions not invite
accusations of a racist double standard? Would there not be an enormous
reluctance by the international community to continually recognize new
ever-more fragile and dependent states? As A.M. Rosenthal (1993) put it:

“The plain truth, never said out loud at the UN, is that countries have been
admitted to membership that cannot or will not take on the minimum
responsibilities that they owe to the international community and to their
own people. The very act of independence can make countries dependents of
the world.”

He adds that:

“the UN could save the world a great deal of grief if it used its rights of
accreditation to create a flexible waiting period between application for
membership and acceptance. If a test is required to drive a car, why not one
to drive a nation?”
If the international community is to reconsider its approach to the African
state architecture, it must be seen as a means to a tangible and realizable
end: either to reduce the likelihood of violent conflict or to generate
states which are more compatible with democratization and economic
development. In short, given the upheaval that would undoubtedly accompany
any major restructuring of the international system, the benefits must
clearly outweigh the costs. To date, the experience of formally changing
political borders has often been a violent process and the international
community has, rightly, remained conservative on the issue of state
recognition. Yet there is still a justifiable desire for flexibility. Rather
than risk the kind of public declarations that Jeffrey Herbst calls for,
there is a need to adopt a more piecemeal approach to any restructuring of
the African state system. Some state entities, such as Somaliland, are
empirically stronger than the juridically-dependent hosts from which they
emerge and have served as ‘building blocks’ for state reconstruction. Given
their potential viability in the longer term, these states-within-states
need to be regarded as prospective candidates for some sort of new federal
arrangement, special status or even formal recognition by the international
community. Efforts to challenge their sovereignty may only undermine some of
the most promising examples of political reorganization in the developing
world. The result would be even more conflict.